5 weeks ago I split a hive with several queen cells. One of the splits despite giving them what eggs I could they apparently never got queen right. Due to weather and other things I haven't been able to get into the hive for 2 weeks. After going into the hive today I discovered that the last queen cell I put in 2 weeks ago must have died or was killed and never torn open. It was a queen cell left after 3 others on the frame opened, the wax was removed from the end but the cocoon was still intact so I thought it might still be ok.
I saw duplex and triplex eggs 2 weeks ago and hoped it was a new queen getting the hang of laying eggs. Today I found a couple of frames of capped drone brood, no open brood and no eggs. Much to my surprise I also found 3 emergency queen cells cells among drone brood.
Here is a picture of 2 of the queen cells.
(http://i1247.photobucket.com/albums/gg634/nietssemaj/Bees/IMG_3959.jpg) (http://s1247.photobucket.com/user/nietssemaj/media/Bees/IMG_3959.jpg.html)
My question is this... is it possible that the bees tried to draw queen cells off of drone brood?
Right after I posted this it dawned on me.... drones take longer to emerge and I likely looked during the couple of days between worker and drone brood emergence.
Wish I had thought of that before I aborted the "obvious" bad queen cells. At least I gave them some more fresh eggs. sigh. Live and learn.
>is it possible that the bees tried to draw queen cells off of drone brood?
Yes. http://bushfarms.com/huber.htm#maleeggsinroyalcells (http://bushfarms.com/huber.htm#maleeggsinroyalcells)
>drones take longer to emerge and I likely looked during the couple of days between worker and drone brood emergence.
Yes.
http://bushfarms.com/beesmath.htm (http://bushfarms.com/beesmath.htm)
> At least I gave them some more fresh eggs.
Yes.
http://bushfarms.com/beespanacea.htm (http://bushfarms.com/beespanacea.htm)